


Finesse

by tiptoe39



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Crime, F/M, Humor, Light-Hearted, POV First Person, Robbery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoe39/pseuds/tiptoe39
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monica tells the story of a bank heist she and Adam foiled, taking detours down memory lane along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finesse

Most days the sun rises in Los Angeles like a fried egg, coming up out of the ground a runny, bleeding yolk surrounded by white. A big old California breakfast in the sky.

Today's not like that. Today's rain, rain, rain. The plant we hung on the balcony's streaming water. I'm on the balcony too, but I'm all dry, 'cause there's a balcony above ours and a balcony above that. I'm just watching the sky, no yolk and no white -- just the whole thing one piece, a big, ugly, gray blob. Up top the clouds are so heavy I think they're gonna come right down. I figure maybe it'll be warm if it does. Maybe it'll feel like a soft gray blanket and keep the chill of the rain from touching us.

I did mention that I'm in L.A. now, right? Yeah, I finally got out. I do stunts for the movies. It's an easy job for me. All I gotta do is look at the stunt done once and that's all I need to do it again. So I got it made. I've even met Halle Berry. Seriously!

That's not the only thing that's changed, though. The other thing that changed is coming out onto the balcony with me right now, offering me a cup of coffee.

"Gloomy day," he says.

"Yeah."

It's good coffee. After a while he sits down next to me. I put my head on his shoulder, and we watch the rain fall.

* * *

 

Now. Let's get one thing straight about Adam. He's an obnoxious, arrogant _git._

(He taught me that word. One of the first things he taught me when I met him. "Screw you, Adam," I'd said to him. "You think you know everything and you're nothing but a...

"Git," he'd said, all crisp and British.

"Git. Yeah, that's exactly it." I never heard the word before, but it sounded just about perfect.)

So there's your question, right? What in the world am I doing with a big old git like Adam?

I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing with him. Everything he ever learned in all his six hundred years -- or five hundred, or seven thousand (he changes it all the time) -- everything in that big self-absorbed head of his, I'm learning it too. He thinks he knows everything, but I can learn anything. In other words, Mr. Adam Monroe has met his match.

He says it's not true. He says to me, "Monica, you can learn any technique in the world, but what you lack is finesse. You can learn how to do a roundhouse kick or build a bomb or shoot a gun, but all that technique does not tell you a thing about _when_ to do it. _How far_ you go. When you restrain yourself, when you talk and when you fight. How you read someone's face and body and learn what they'll do next. How do you watch the actions of a changing world and know which way it'll turn? That's finesse, and you lack it. And that means you'll never be my true match."

But he's been teaching me. I've been learning.

It's a good thing, too. You don't need finesse flipping burgers or taking care of brats. But you do need it here in L.A., and you do need it fighting crime.

Did I mention we're fighting crime?

* * *

 

I like his accent. He says I'm the one with the accent. I tell him, "Look around you, see where you are? You don't get to decide."

He laughs at me, goes into his version of a New York accent. "Would'ya like it bett'r if I tawlked like dis? Wadda you tink?"

I laugh. "Get your big-city ass over here," I say, wiggling my hips, "and I'll teach you some local flavor."

"Bada-bing," he says as he walks over.

* * *

 

He's teaching me how to profile. I'm slow at it, but I'm learning. The other day, I see this guy's going into a bank, and I look at the way he's hunching over, with his hands on his hips, like he's adjusting something inside his coat, and the way he looks around -- he's trouble, I think.

Adam agrees, but he says, "You must realize that ninety percent of the people who go into a bank with the intent of causing trouble either don't go through with it or are easily thwarted. Silent alarms and security guards are only ineffective in the movies. Nine times out of ten there's no reason for us to get involved."

"And that one time out of ten?"

He shrugs.

"What if it's that one and we could have made a difference?"

He laughs at me. "It's your civic duty, is it?" he says. "The one thing I can't seem to teach you is to be selfish."

"Maybe being self_less_," I say to him, "is the one thing I can teach _you._"

* * *

 

Most of our conversations aren't like that, of course. Most of the time, we just shoot the shit. We were walking down Rodeo Drive the other day, pretending we were rich, and there's this starlet. You know, the kind you see in the magazines that aren't about anything? They're famous for being in the magazines and the magazines print them cause they're famous? She was carrying her little doggy, walking down the street, and closing in behind her are about five dozen photographers. "She should just turn around and give them a picture," Adam says sourly.

"Give the poor girl a break. She just wants to buy some shoes."

"Ten-thousand-dollar shoes. She deserves all the ridicule she gets."

"You're awful," I say. "If I had ten thousand dollars to blow on a pair of shoes--"

"--you wouldn't."

"Yeah, but I'd want to!"

He sort of gives me this smile, and I get the feeling I've just lost a fight.

* * *

 

Back to the bank. We go in. It's a big, wide, open lobby that looks like it's being restored; there's a scaffold above us in one corner, like they're reworking some of the rafters. I gotta admit, they look a bit crumbly. You don't want a ceiling this high caving in.

Adam says we're gonna look more suspicious than the guy we're tailing. I say I'll get in line, ask for a withdrawal of twenty bucks in quarters. Something that'll take long enough for us to be there when this guy does whatever he does. He rolls his eyes. He doesn't want to be bothered. Well, tough luck. He got himself bothered the first time he approached me.

"Nine out of ten," he says.

"Twenty bucks in quarters," I say. "And if that doesn't take long enough, I'll ask for the second ten in nickles and dimes instead."

He laughs and shrugs. "You're in control."

"Damn straight."

But we're still in line when the guy shuffles up to the counter, hands in his pockets. We can't hear him, but we can see the teller and hear her answer that he needs to fill out a deposit slip. She hands him one, and a pen, and he writes something on the slip. Her face changes.

I duck out of line, make myself scarce. In the back of the bank there's a row of cubicles, where the guys sit who try and make you borrow money and open accounts and things. I head into one of them. There's a lady banker and a guy client there and they start to ask something but I turn around and say "Shh! Keep down" and for an instant they're scared of me. So I put my hands on the desk between them and say "There's trouble out there. Just stay put a sec."

_Nine times out of ten_, I think to myself, and now I'm a little bit scared. Suddenly I want what Adam says to be true. I want this whole thing to go down easy. We won't have to lift a finger. And these two can kick me out of their office and call me a crazy loon and Adam and I can go get crepes so he can mock me mercilessly.

Then I hear a spray of gunfire and know things are just not going to go my way today.

* * *

 

Don't know what brought him down there in the first place, but I guess it must have been that stupid-ass _Enquirer_ story. It was tucked into the back; almost nobody read it. 'Cept Adam did. He loves that kind of stuff. "I've read every other story in the world, love," he says, sounding tired and even more British than usual. "Multiple times. Give me the ones people make up. At least _they're_ original."

Yeah, he had to be high-and-mighty even about meeting me.

Bastard set up a trap, too. Started following me one night, noticed what I noticed and left me a trail of clues I couldn't ignore. Just like in the movies -- I see him, we fight, he leans back and applauds. "St. Joan is not just an urban legend, after all," he says. "Good to get the confirmation."

"Are you a reporter?"

At that, he laughs himself sick. "I'm your new teacher," he replies.

"What makes you think I need a teacher?"

And this is the first time he mentions finesse.

* * *

 

We're crouched down in the cubicle, the poor banker shuddering, and I'm hoping this guy will just forget we exist long enough for me to scope out the place, figure out a way to get these two out. No such luck. There are footsteps, and shouts, and then there's a guy with a gun too big for anyone but a Sasquatch, a guy who isn't the guy we saw earlier. Shit, he had backup. There's not much I can do without getting noticed now except for haul my hands above my head and go sit down with the rest of the poor suckers who were in the wrong place at such a wrong time.

Five guys in total. Not an unmanageable number but a hell of a challenge, and hard to take down without collateral damage. I need the advantage of stealth. I need to find my way out of this line without anybody seeing me, and I need to take them by surprise, maybe split them up. I lean forward a bit and catch Adam's gaze in the line of hostages. He gives me this look like "Well, you asked for it." I fume for a minute, but then his look changes, and he nods at me.

I lean back and wait for my chance.

* * *

 

I'm good at stealth. Stealth's all about how you hold and control your body, and that's what I do. It's been a lot of fun lurking in the shadows and waiting for the kid selling the dime bags to get back to his boss, who gets back to his boss, who then gets a surprise waiting in his crib, the one place he thinks he's safe.

Adam's good too, and that's what made me good, but it really bit when I was still learning. You can't sneak up on the man. He doesn't even need to look at you to know you're there, he just goes on reading his tabloids and says "While you're standing there, would you mind bringing me the sugar? This coffee you made is dreadful."

He even wakes up when he 's sleeping if you try and sneak up on him. It's a pain in the ass.

So I sneak up on him one day when he's sleeping and he yells at me to go away. I keep on sneaking. Finally he just sits straight up in bed and tells me to go back to my room_mpmph_, because his lips run smack into mine.

Stealth is good, but it ain't the only way to turn things around.

* * *

 

I've named the Five Dwarves of the Bank Heist now. There's Stalky, who keeps walking back and forth in front of us with that big-ass gun of his. Shifty, who keeps looking out the windows. Jumpy, the guy we followed in here. And then Cashful and Doc, who are filling briefcases and bags with whatever they can find behind the teller windows.

(Cashful, come on, now _that's_ cute. Cashful! Get it?)

The big problem right now is, nobody's moving. If people were running around screaming, it'd be easy to get lost in the shuffle. But we're all in one big line, sitting against the wall, and that means the only way to get out is to be seen getting out.

God, I hate doing this. But Adam was right - it comes in just as handy as learning how to dropkick someone. It's just not as much fun.

I fall to the floor and start shaking uncontrollably. Except it _is_ controlled - that's what I do, right? My muscles learn by watching. They can replicate anything, even something that's involuntary in most people. Adam gets props for coming up with the idea, although I still think he had something a little nastier in mind when he started talking about controlled muscle spasm. Perv.

I hear someone murmur, "Is she spastic?" Close, lady, but no cigar.

Someone with a bit more sense says, "Looks like an epileptic fit. It'll probably pass. Somebody, watch her head."

And then the whole room starts up buzzing. I guess it must be a lotta help to think about something other than being held hostage by five heat-packing dwarves.

"Aren't you supposed to, like, put a spoon in her mouth or something?"

"That's a myth, just make sure she doesn't smack her head against the floor."

I'm in a lady stranger's lap all of a sudden. "I have her."

"You should let her out. Let her go get medical help." Adam's voice. He knows me so well. "The police will take care of her."

"No police," Shifty says from the window. "Not yet."

"Not ever," says Jumpy with a snarl. Turns out he's written on that deposit slip, _trip a silent alarm, get yourself killed. 100 percent chance we slaughter you if a single cop car shows up._ Forced her to pass it around and show the other tellers. This all happened while I was in that damn cubicle, so I missed it. Heard about it later. (Guess I just gave away the ending of the story, are you surprised? I survive. That's what they call a spoiler alert.)

"Then let her lie down somewhere," Adam says. "She's not well."

I have the barrel of a gun poking at my shoulder. Why do I have the barrel of a gun poking at my shoulder? Can't a criminal just carry a bouquet of flowers once in a while? Anyway, it's Stalky, and he says, "You OK?" He somehow thinks I'm gonna answer him. I keep on jumping around, let my breath get tight too.

"It's a seizure, you moron, she can't control her muscles," Adam says, doing that arrogant-Brit thing he does so well. "And she's likely to split her head open if you don't find her someplace other than the floor to lie down."

The Five Dwarves look at each other. Really, I'm thinking, if I wasn't scared someone was gonna get hurt, I could probably take 'em all right now. So lay low. Lay low and shake a lot. I'm going to hell for this, aren't I?

Long story short: I end up locked in an office with Cashful right outside. He was kinda gentle about carrying me, putting me down on the couch in here. Really, boys that big should be holding women more and guns less. Part of my bleeding-heart morality, I know. It's gotten me in trouble before.

* * *

 

Like the time I had to learn swordfighting. Why the hell did I need to know swordfighting? But I did, so I watched, and I learned. And he could still beat me, because (let me guess) it's about _finesse_, about knowing _when_ to do _what_ and I guess I just don't know it yet. That part I have to learn the same way everybody else does.

I can practice with a real sword, though, because Adam's, well, he's kinda resistant to the whole cuts and bruises thing. He says you gotta know the feel of it, the weight. A fake one won't do. Like I'm gonna fight with a real sword any day.

Then one day he says to me, "This is the part where you run me through."

"Yeah, yeah," I say, figuring he's just telling me "good job."

"Monica," he says, standing there, waiting for something.

"What?"

He gives me this sourpuss scowl. "_Kill_ me."

"_What?_"

"Kill me," he says again. Like I'm gonna do that even if he begs a thousand times. "You have to learn how. Watching someone fake it on a movie screen isn't going to teach you. You need to be familiar with how the organs feel when they tear, or you won't be able to do it when the time is right."

"You're an idiot," I scoff at him. "I'm not killing anyone with any damn sword."

He gets up in my face. "Do it. You need to know how."

"Make me," I say, throwing down the sword and fuming into his face.

He's rolling his eyes now, saying, "How many times do I have to show you? I can't die, not permanently. You don't have to be afraid of that."

"I'm not afraid of you dying," I tell him, poking him in the chest with my finger. "I'm afraid of killing you."

He actually looks kind of shocked. "That makes no sense."

I snap at him. "You always think everything's about you. It's not, Adam. I don't want to kill you because I don't want to be that person, OK? I don't want to be the kind of person who can kill you just as... as _practice._ I don't think I'd like myself much if I could do that. And I don't think you'd like me very much like that, either."

He looks at me with these eyes... I've never seen eyes like that.

And then he's stomping out of the room, waving me aside. But for a couple of days later he's looking at me kind of smiling, and when I call him on it, that's when he stops being my teacher and starts being something more.

* * *

 

A locked office is only as good as its door, and this one is credit-card easy. What's better, it's silent as it opens. I'm two inches behind Cashful before he realizes he's about to get hit over the head with a leather-bound copy of _Ethics and the Modern Banking Institution._ Let me tell you, I know some bankers who ought to get hit over the head with that book, too.

Cashful goes down, an easy hit, and I start to sneak away. I think I'm somewhere in the back, because it's just a hallway with a staircase on one end. The way I came's back to the lobby, so the stairs are my only option. At least I have half a chance of finding a way to get back to the lobby without being seen. I'm nearly up to the steps when someone grabs my shoulder.

That sunnabitch Doc is there, all sweaty from having chased me down. He must have heard the book hit Cashful on the noggin. What a pair of dorks. He grabs and pulls at air, because I'm already down and tripping his feet. He gives a shout and I think his jaw probably shatters as he hits the ground. The shout was too loud. I should worry. But I'm too busy kicking the side of his head to make sure he doesn't wake up for a good long time.

Up the steps and I'm on the second floor, a row of offices and a kind of catwalk thing, all fenced off, leading into the rafters. There's that scaffolding, the kind I saw from the ground floor. It's connected to the catwalk by a steel beam, and the beam is hanging by a wire, pulleyed around and roped to part of the railing.

The row of hostages is on the other side of the hall, and Stalky's walking back and forth like a damn idiot. Shifty's AWOL, and Jumpy's standing right beneath the whole mess of scaffolding.

Wouldn't it be a damn shame if someone untied that wire and the whole thing came a'tumbling down. Ooh, sometimes I'm so clever I kinda wanna rub my hands together like a movie villain.

'Cept, when I look down, I see Shifty running back into the hall. Looking panicked.

He runs in, has a brief conference with Jumpy, who freaks the hell out. "They're what? That fucking bitch!" Oh, crap, my two-dwarf care package has been found.

"You!" He points his gun toward the row. "You planned this?"

Adam shrugs. "Of course. Isn't she marvelous at faking a seizure?"

Oh, _great_, you big git. There's a lot of finesse right there.

I should just cut that wire now. Except for now Adam's up and walking toward Jumpy, hands raised. Stalky's got a gun at his back and is prodding him forward while Jumpy points his gun at the rest of the hostages. "Anybody make a move and this man is dead, you hear that?"

Let's see. I could jump onto that rope and ride the beam down to the ground, take Stalky and Jumpy down easy. The beam would probably land square on Adam, though. He'd be OK with that. I'm the one who's not OK with that. And in the meantime there's two dozen hostages against the wall. This ain't climbing up a skyscraper, that's for sure.

* * *

 

Did I ever tell you the story about how we got our place?

He says to me, "Come and see my new apartment," gives me the address. I'm brand new in L.A. and don't know anyone but him.

So I walk up to the apartment building, which is like twenty stories high, key in his name, and he says "Come around to the back" and hangs up. Doesn't buzz me in or anything. He's playing some sort of game with me? Fine, I'll play. I'm gonna smack him later, but I'll play.

In the back of the apartment, looking up at twenty balconies stacked like a deck of cards, and my phone rings.

"I hate you," I answer.

"I have a surprise for you," he says.

"Oh, _really_?"

"Come up to the apartment and I'll show you,"

"Let me _in,_" I say, seriously thinking of a way to reach through the phone and bite his head off, "and I'll come on up."

Line goes dead. That _jerk._

Fine. I'll find another way.

He said he was on the 13th floor. Just like him to choose that number, right? I eye the gutter, the bricks, the second-floor balcony. Not impossible. I just have to watch what I'm doing.

I make it up there without scaring too many little old ladies, and there's only one kid who shouts to his mother that Catwoman's on his porch. Still, it's pretty tough climbing, and I'm exhausted when I tumble onto Adam's balcony, for good measure hitting my head on that hanging plant he's got. I say a nasty word and go tumbling.

He catches me, of course. He always has.

"This better be a damn good surprise," I say.

"It is," he says. "For God's sake, Monica, I thought you'd have more sense than this. Couldn't you have sweet-talked a security guard or something?"

"Gets the job done, don't it?"

"No finesse whatsoever," he says, getting all mumbly. He helps me inside, and it's a gorgeous apartment, all furnished and everything. I limp around and check it out -- I got a skinned knee from climbing balconies. Bedroom's nice. Big bed. Two sets of drawers.

Two sets of drawers, two closets. Two nightstands.

"And here is the surprise," he whispers in my ear. "It's not my apartment. It's yours."

I turn to him, play with his collar a bit, and say to him, "You mean ours."

"Well." He shrugs. "Have you ever known me to give anything away for free?"

I give him a _look._ "You are a shameless horse's ass, Adam Monroe."

He leans in to kiss me. "But one with _style._"

* * *

 

"Wherever you are, bitch," Jumpy's yelling, "one move and this guy's toast, you hear?"

"Can't I be an English muffin, at least?" Adam complains. "Toast's so cliche."

Jumpy hits him with the butt of his pistol. Adam swears briefly, but he's having too much fun to shut the hell up, and he starts going on about demanding jam rather than butter, and he's actually getting some laughs from the others like it's a comedy club instead of a hostage situation for God's sake.

He's halfway through requesting tea, because of course it can't be a decent high tea without _tea_, and I've started to work on cutting that wire loose, when all of a sudden there's the click of a safety and Adam shuts the hell up very, very fast.

Nothing shuts Adam up when he's in the middle of talking. What just happened?

For a moment I'm blank, and then I know in the pit of my stomach. I lean over the catwalk railing to let my eyes confirm it.

Yup.

He's got a gun to the back of Adam's head. He's got a gun to the _back_ of Adam's _head._

My heart's up in my throat now, won't go back down no matter how many times I try to swallow it, because I know, Adam I _know_ you didn't give a rat's furry behind about this guy and I got you into this, and if I do the wrong thing now you're dead, not just temporarily dead but permanently dead, and I lose everything if I lose you, not just this fight but everything my life's been about ever since I met you, you crazy sexy git that you are, because you _are_ everything. All of history, the whole world, it's you.

* * *

 

The rain's comin' down and sloshing over the whole world, and my head's on his shoulder. It's soothing. The coffee's warm.

"Why?" I ask him.

"Why what?" There's a laugh somewhere in his voice.

I prop my chin on his shoulder. From this distance he's just a big blurry blob of pink skin. "Why _me_?"

He scoots around to face me and he puts his coffee cup down behind me. It's gonna get rained on, but I have the feelin' something's gonna be important. He's never this gentle.

"Because I have been living for four hundred years,." he says to me. "and because for the first time in at least two or three hundred of those I can feel compassion again. I can care about what happens to someone and I can want her life to be better than what she's seen so far. That's... refreshing. It feels new. And I haven't felt anything new in centuries.";

He looks away. "Not making any sense, sodding brilliant I am," he starts mumbling, and I stop him, touch his face and bring it up to face me again.

"You know, you could just say you love me," I tell him.

He looks blank for a sec, and then he smirks that all-knowing smirk of his.

"I could," he says, "but where's the fun in that?"

* * *

 

The panic goes through me and is gone. I've got one choice, then, don't I? Oh, Adam's gonna let me have it when we get home.

I cut it loose.

Whole thing goes up in smoke, boom-boom-boom, and there's a bunch of screams like a panicked henhouse, and Jumpy's knocked off his feet. He shoots the gun into the air. I'm in the air, too, jumping for the rope. I catch it with a hiss as it burns my hand, red splinters in my palm, and I'm sliding down with the beam. A sick thunk, Adam goes down, and there's a chorus of gasps. Jumpy sees him crumple, and for an instant he's got that oh-my-god what-have-I-done look. That's when I go for it.

Jumpy goes down with a single punch and Stalky actually _drops_ his gun; Shifty's caught beneath the scaffolding and I hear him rattle around in there for a while as I shout "Out, out, out!" to the bank patrons, who, thank God, are actually smart enough to get up and go so they're not there to hear Adam groan like a delirious hippo or something and fix his spine so he can stand back up.

"Holy mother of God, woman, that _hurt!_" he roars.

I look around from where I'm holding Stalky's too-big-for-both-of-us gun to Shifty's throat. "So it didn't kill you," I say cheerfully. "My record's still perfect."

"It bloody well could have!" he says, coming over to help me tie him up with the fallen wire. "If that thing were an inch to the left..."

I shut him up with a kiss, pat his cheek.

_"Finesse,"_ I say.

He grumbles, but offers his arm. As the sirens start to crescendo in front of the building, we saunter out the back way and head home.


End file.
